“You are trying to brainwash us! Brainwash us to be happy.” That’s what he said. And why? Well, a few years ago, I was encouraging students to “not worry,” just the kinds of coaching that comes with long-term project-based stuff. I’m sure I was also saying things like “take a risk” and “don’t fear failure.” Typical motivational jargon. And I thought I was doing a pretty good job of it. That is until he looked at me with disgust and accused me of brainwashing him. In my dumbfoundedness, I think I only muttered, “Wha-huh?” as a retort.

That moment is a big one on of my hypocrite teacher timeline. It’s one of a handful of moments that I can’t “shake.” I was challenging a fixed mindset, challenging their own self-applied limitations. Still, I wasn’t risking anything. Even if true, my privilege made it easy to tell another person to “not worry.” And honestly, most of the fears students expressed were valid and well-established by experience.

So if both are valid, what was right? It did not feel like he was right, but honestly, it didn’t feel like I was either.

In the spring, I happened upon “Conspicuous Consumption of Time.” According to its authors, we are “driven by the perceptions that a busy person possesses desired human capital characteristics (competence, ambition) and is scarce and in demand on the job market.” In other words, by seeming busy, we posture our status. We are waving a sign that screams “I’m too-busy so you know I’m hyper-competent!”

For my own visualization, I borrow from popular culture. I remember the “walk-n-talks” from 90s television, like those in The West Wing or E.R. Both shows about people too busy to work at a desk all day and instead had a small, circuitous route between office and conference/exam-room.

The idea that powerful, important people are more busy is built on the notion that working more and working noticeably are what powerful, important people do.

For us teachers, how could this romanticizing of busyness impact students who have grown up thinking of it as the key indication of success? How might the notions that the best are also the busiest mislead them? Perhaps it’s why they can’t trust others in group work. Perhaps it’s why they can’t work on one task at a time. Or perhaps it’s why they seem to insist on doing homework with their phones near. Most importantly, how do we tell the difference between those who are succeeding and appear busy and those who appear busy and aren’t succeeding? Or worse, for a teen, what’s the difference between being busy and appearing busy?

For the past few years, psychologists and parents have been alerting us to the amount of age inappropriate stress that teens are undergoing. This is particularly apparent in high-achieving students and college preparatory schools. In other words, it is particularly present in education that has increased rigor without increased student support. Why? Because these high school and college students are aspiring towards a kind of Herculean, grit-driven, uncompromising success. But they only know that they are doing that if they are also busy. Succeeding without the show of stress then isn’t succeeding. So they’re also internalizing personality characteristics that have historically been reserved for those with high-stressed jobs of high-significance.

The student who objected to my “brain-washing” was a successful student. He was also busy. He had a sport, an art, and the most rigorous course load. However, in class, he also vacillated between a silly, innocent nature and a snarky, cynical nature. He was rarely at equilibrium between them. In fact, if he wasn’t one or the other, he was probably falling asleep or doing work for other classes. He was definitely a successful person, definitely a busy person, and definitely a stressed person. His resistance to “happiness,” as he termed it, was an objection to my villainizing stress.

To a high achiever then, here’s the logic: stress is the just the cost of busyness, and busyness is a key indicator of success.

As a hypocrite teacher, I have to admit that it’s the cost of my own success too. Teachers are overworked. Many of us are struggling with anxiety and depression, just like our students. Even when we’re not required to stay on campus after a nine hour day of teaching to perform duty, work on PD, grade, or plan, we’re probably lurking at arts and athletic events to support students. Busyness is a part of what we do. But that means we’re also the models here. Maybe we normalize what pop culture only glamorizes.

I worry about continuing to make busyness the cost of doing business as a teacher. I worry about the stress-levels of my students, especially their development of healthy ways to cope and manage stress. We have to admit that that’s a concern. We are the ones who see them in classrooms reacting to an A- as though it is a West Wing security leak or an emergency room patient code.

Our role in this is apparent to me. Now as a hypocrite teacher, I’m not surprised. But as a confessed, hypocrite teacher I also cannot be comfortable with it.